When actress Nancy E. Carroll originally read the script for “Precious Little,” it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.

“I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t understand it,” she says with a laugh.

Lee Mikeska Gardner, the artistic director of the Nora Theatre Company, had sent the script to Carroll to see if she was interested in performing in the Nora’s production of the play, directed by Melia Bensussen. Now, after an unrewarding read-through, Carroll had to make a decision.

“I thought, ‘I’m clearly missing something here. But I totally trust Lee and Melia, so I’m going to depend on them to help me understand how the pieces of the play fit together,’ ” says Carroll. “It’s a very interesting play, now that I understand it.”

“Precious Little,” an 80-minute one-act that runs March 2-26 at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge, follows a research linguist named Brodie (Gardner) who finds out that her unborn child may never be able to learn a language. She now faces a difficult decision, and her sharp mind may cloud her judgment rather than provide clarity.

“When we are in crisis, our knowledge can get in the way of being quiet enough to make the decisions that we need to make,” says Carroll, who clearly understands the play more deeply than she did after her first reading. “We tend to live in the past or in the future, and not in the moment.”

The play, written by Madeleine George, provides a rare acting challenge for some lucky actor: They get to play a gorilla. When she learned she needed to fill the role of this primate, director Bensussen immediately thought of Carroll.

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult,” Carroll says with a laugh.

It’s a compliment. That’s what people tend do after they see Carroll act: They compliment. Carroll, a Rockport resident, has distinguished herself during the many decades she’s been a Boston-area actress. Her career runs the spectrum, from the smallest stages in Boston, to the Huntington Theatre Company, to Broadway (“Present Laughter”) and Hollywood (“Spotlight” and “Olive Kitteridge”).

And now she plans to ape an ape.

In the play, Brodie visits a gorilla in the zoo. Although the audience can hear the gorilla’s thoughts, Brodie cannot. However, communication takes many forms. And by watching the ape, Brodie recognizes that the animal “is in total harmony with her environment and herself,” says Carroll, who also performs other (human) roles in the play.

If Carroll is playing a gorilla, she wants to get it right. And that starts with the animal’s movements.

“Thank God for the internet,” says Carroll, who’s been studying videos of gorillas online. “I’ve been watching the way they position their hands and their bodies. Their hind legs are so short that they walk on the knuckles of their hands. It’s been a wonderful physical challenge. I need to capture every physical detail that I can in order to help the audience suspend its disbelief.”

It’s that kind of commitment and attention to detail that has taken Carroll’s career all the way to Ireland. That was the home base for a production of Martin McDonagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” which enjoyed a five-month run in Ireland and the United States, including a stop in Boston. The production was staged by the same Druid theater company that’s now completing its run of “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” at the Emerson/Paramount Center in Boston.

Carroll’s ability to land a role in an acclaimed international production is further proof of her talent and perseverance.

“I was looking for an adventure,” says Carroll, recalling how she joined the Druid cast. “I wanted to travel.”

She began scrolling through websites for acting opportunities far and wide, and she saw that Druid was holding auditions in New York for a touring production of “Cripple.”

“The notice said they were looking for someone who could play a 90-year-old woman, but also had the stamina for a long tour,” remembers Carroll. “I thought, ‘I can do that!’ I contacted my agent and said, ‘Please get me in.’ ”

Carroll got an audition. And a call-back or two. But then there was silence.

“A couple weeks went by and I started feeling pretty disappointed,” she says. “And then I got the phone call that I had been cast. It was just about the best job I’ve ever had. Ireland is my favorite place in the world. That experience was heaven. The added bonus was that [Druid] asked me back again” to perform in “Big Maggie.”

Carroll also got the chance to see how plays are produced in Ireland, and she reports there are many differences. She says the rehearsal period is about twice as long as the condensed schedule actors endure in the United States.

“And the rehearsal breaks – they call them ‘tea breaks’ – are about 30 minutes instead of about 10,” says Carroll. “After all, the kettle has to boil.”

But now she’s back on American time. As we spoke, Carroll and the rest of the “Precious Little” cast were about a week away from technical rehearsals, and Carroll was looking forward to the addition of lights, sets and sounds that, she believes, will play an important role in telling this stylized tale.